


Dead End

by Geonn



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aftermath, Apocalypse, Dark, F/F, Future Fic, Halloween, Tragedy, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-26
Updated: 2012-10-26
Packaged: 2017-11-17 02:20:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geonn/pseuds/Geonn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A London police officer fears the zombie apocalpyse may not be as over as everyone thinks it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead End

Somebody once theorized that a world with zombie movies could never have a zombie outbreak. What they meant was that a civilization that has been constantly bombarded by idiots holing up in shopping malls and fighting to reach the CDC has seen examples of what not to do. Don't go into the basement to investigate some odd noise. Don't flee upstairs. Don't make the mistake of thinking the zombie is just sick and needs to be cured by the power of love. A zombie is a zombie. A person who has been bitten is a zombie and you cannot save them. 

The first zombie reports came in 2014. People thought that it was just a funny news story, like the bath salts thing in America back in '12. But then the numbers grew and it became impossible to ignore, let alone laugh at. They were in America, here in the UK, across Europe... India got the worst of it, due to the population crush. Some people believe places like Beijing and Hong Kong due to the pollution in the air. People were already wearing masks when they turned, and as zombies they were too dead to think about taking them off to bite. It was like muzzling a puppy before it became an attack dog.

We had Romero. We had _The Walking Dead_ and, hell, we had _Shaun of the Dead_ , so we didn't make idiotic mistakes. People were wise. Scientists didn't risk taking samples of live deadheads to try and cure it, they just took pieces and tested them in secure sterile environments. No one took stupid risks, and there were no unnecessary infestations.

Meanwhile, in the streets, soldiers and police held off the shuffling armies. In reality it was almost embarrassing to think about the hopelessness in every single zombie movie. They were relatively easy to contain. Zombies didn't care where they got their meal, they just wanted as much food as possible. Cattle were brought in and used as decoys, luring the dead into corrals where they were either burned or eliminated in a methodical fashion.

There was one rule: a bullet to the head keeps them dead.

They kept us safe. ZED, the Zombie Eradication Defense, was formed in order to prevent the dead from reaching unmanageable levels. They were deployed to hospitals, morgues, funeral homes and cemeteries to keep an eye out for any signs of the infected. Meanwhile the scientists isolated the virus that cause zombie-ism and found a way to eliminate it. Inoculations became an international pastime. Before, we lined up for ten hours to get iPhones. Now we did it so when we died we would have the luxury of remaining dead.

There was a ten year old "Got 'Nocced?" poster hanging over my desk in the station house, the once-vibrant red background faded to a dull pink. The skin tone on the defiant fist in the center of the picture had faded into a sickly green, making it look inadvertently like a zombie's arm. When I was a kid, the posters had been on every street corner. It was the tame sort of propaganda compared to some of the other things that came out once the disease was quelled.

One advertisement had a well-known international celebrity solemnly look into the camera and say, "Get Nocced. Or accept the fact that one day you will kill your family. Unless they kill you first." The last shot was of a kindly old woman in hair curlers and a housecoat pumping a shotgun before aiming it at the lens.

The inoculations killed off the virus completely. Soon ZED was put on stand-down, and people began taking it for granted that their dead loved ones would remain in the coffin once they were put in the ground. Some people took extra security measures, of course, and there started a trend of postmortem beheadings. People were decapitated by funeral directors and their heads and bodies were buried in separate boxes. I was old enough to remember the zombie movies that came before the reality of it. My mother had never let me watch them but, once it became a reality, she became less strict about what constituted proper entertainment. What was once gratuitous and sickening violence became a training video.

I killed my first zombie when I was ten. It had been my next-door neighbor, and she still smelled vaguely like cookies when I took her head off with my father's shotgun. My brother took to the high ground. Once a little terror who egged houses and carried a slingshot around like some demented Dennis the Menace, he became a sniper with a dead-eye and an eye for the dead.

By the time I joined the Metro, the last zombies had been put back in the ground or burned in a furnace, so I was more likely to get called out for standard criminals. Husband beating wife, wife beating husband, broken door lock or window. My partner Stan was disappointed, but I'd earned my zombie merit badge before I got my diploma. I was happy for the change of pace.

My name is Carolina. Like the state in America, yeah. My mother was from there and thought it was pretty. Few miles to the South and I could have been Georgia. Lots of could have been in my life, but nothing I honestly regretted much. I had a job I loved, a partner I loved even more, and a comfortable flat. I had a dog named Roscoe and I could sleep as long as I wanted on Sundays provided Gina didn't wake me up to help her with the crossword. Not that I minded when she did that. 

I was living in a post-apocalyptic world and, guess what Mr. Romero, we bounced back. America was making great strides thanks to the vaccine, and zombies were little more than a nuisance. The latest controversy was a producer in California who wanted to round up some remaining zombies to kill on-screen to give his war movie a feel of reality. I felt he should be allowed so long as they held a raffle to see who got to kill him once he became a zombie himself. Zombies became an America problem, and then just a complication for rural European communities. Before long they were a distant memory.

Business continued. People went back to stealing and lying and cheating and I did my appointed rounds as a constable with the greatest police force in the civilized world.

The bell jingled over my head as I entered the shop, and a sweaty ashen man appeared behind the counter. He swiped his forehead with a rag as he pointed to the alley exit. When he spoke, his voice was rushed and thickly accented Pashto.

"I told him he was going to get himself killed, but he didn't listen!"

"Calm down and speak English," I told him. I switched to my native language and asked, "Now what is the problem, sir?"

He jabbed his finger at the open doorway. "The fool is pretending to be a zombie! Lurching and grunting. He scare away all my customers."

I rolled my eyes and nodded. This had been happening more frequently lately; people who thought it was a laugh to dress in rags and lurch around like they were zombies. I had the same feeling toward them as I did with the Hollywood moron. Shoot them on sight, I say, just to be safe. They brought it on themselves.

I told the shopkeeper to stay where he was and went through the door. I pushed it open with the tip of my baton and leaned out. The fool was trapped in the alleyway, running his hands over the fence like he couldn't figure out how to get over it. Gotta give the dunce credit for committing to his dumbass joke. I whistled and he stopped scrambling. 

"Fun's over, son. You had your fun, now come with me."

He turned around, his left shoulder dropped lower than his right. His face was gray-green, and his bottom lip drooped to reveal the bottom row of rotten teeth. I grimaced at the sight of him and realized he must be on something. 

"Yeah, you scared a lot of people. Big man. Now come on. I gotta take you in for disturbin' the peace." I moved closer and he began to shamble toward me. "Yeah. Really nice. What, you watch _28 Days Later_ all weekend just to get it right?" We met in the middle of the alley and he lifted his arm to me.

"Oy. No." I swatted at his hand with my baton and then waved it in his face. "You go down for assaulting me, you'll be locked up a lot longer. Think about how you'll feel when this shit wears off, awright? Now--"

He grabbed for my baton and I jumped back two steps to keep the distance between us. His hand tightened around my baton, so I jerked my arm back to free it. Two of his fingers snapped from trying to hold on, but he showed no visible reaction. I finally noticed his eyes were covered with milky cataracts.

"Bloody hell." I began to retreat. I held up my baton like a lightsaber and thumbed my shoulder radio with the other hand. "Stanny boy. Bring me the brain bolt."

I heard him laughing as he came back. "What?"

"The brain bolt. I'm in the alley behind Fareek's. Bring me the blasted bolter and do it quick."

The brain bolt looked like a cross between a hairdryer and a handgun, based on the bolt pistols they use in slaughterhouses. Press it to the back of a zombie's head, pull the trigger, crack boom, no more brain and no more zombie with a minimum of blood or fuss. They were issued to all coppers during and immediately after the zombies became a real problem. We still carried them, they were just kept in the trunk with the tire jack and other shit we never really used. But now I was sincerely hoping I hadn't unloaded it months ago and forgot to put it back in.

Each time the zombie reached for me, I batted his hands away with my baton. I brought it down with force on his arms, hearing the bones crack. This guy wasn't just flying on something; he was completely gone. He had the animal look I recognized from the days before, but a part of me was refusing to believe it was possible.

Stan came out into the alley and first looked the wrong way. When he saw me being pushed back, his eyes widened and he rushed to my aid.

"About damned time," I growled.

"I thought you were joking!" He pressed the brain bolt to the back of the zombie's head. It reacted to the pressure half a second before Stan pulled the trigger. The bolt cracked the thing's skull and it dropped to its knees like the sack of inanimate organs it was supposed to be. I backed up another few steps and stared down at it. When I looked up, Stan was pressed against the wall looking green.

"Y'all right, Stanny boy?"

"I never seen one before. Not up close like this."

"Where were you raised, fuckin' Iran?"

Zombies didn't like the heat. Didn't like the cold, either. Winter helped with the cleansing; it's hard to win a war when your army freezes in place. People went to work choppin' 'em down like Christmas trees. 

"Call ZED. Get 'em out here."

Stan looked at me. "I... a-are they even still around?"

I sighed and got on the radio myself, requesting a ZED unit to come take a look. They had been around ever since the last zombie sighting almost six years earlier. Sitting around like a budget black hole, taking in money and never being called upon to ply their trade. Sometimes they went out on patrols so people would remember who they were. Sometimes they would hold a conference reminding people how important it was to get your kids nocced. But today they were going to earn their paychecks.

#

Gina chopped the vegetables while I stood at the stove. David Bowie was playing on the radio and Gina was regaling me with stories about her day. She was a botanist. The stories were as riveting as you can imagine. When she finally exhausted her tale, she asked me how my day had gone. I transferred the pieces of veggie to the pan as I tried to think of what to tell her.

The ZED had shown up in their trademark red-on-blue van. They sealed off the scene and sequestered me, Stan and Fareek to get our statements. I got the odd feeling that they didn't act like a defunct agency, a sensation that was further justified when I overheard one of them on the radio say something to the effect of "there's been another one." My uniform was taken away from me and I was forced to change into a bright blue bunny suit. A doctor looked me over with distressing thoroughness to ensure I hadn't been bitten or scratched or gotten any blood on me. 

We were cleared and ordered to keep our mouths shut. The official story was that we'd run off a kid who had a macabre sense of humor. Our brain bolt was confiscated since each discharge was monitored by a counter on the grip. I was finally given the rest of the day off and sent home. I'd just gotten changed into my civvies when Gina got home.

I made up a story about a dull day. It wasn't hard. I just took pieces of real days and pasted them together. People weren't very creative in the ways they broke the law. Hearts broke, people stole, we came in and swept up the remains and took the perpetrator to jail. Police work was, in all honesty, more boring than Gina's plants. She paid as much attention to my story as I had to hers, and we were free to move on to more interesting topics over dinner.

The next day at the station, I received something unusual. An official report I hadn't written was waiting for my signature on my desk. Call me odd, but I read it.

The report stated that, at 1522 on 16 September, I responded to the call at Fareek's Convenience. I confronted a young man who was acting suspicious and frightening customers and asked him to leave. When he responded aggressively, I responded with necessary force to subdue the suspect. Unfortunately, he later died of the injuries sustained in the scuffle.

I flipped to the second page of the report. I'd been cleared of any wrongdoing in the death of the suspect, a man the medical examiner had identified as Simon Frost. Seemed like an awful lot of work to have happened in twenty short hours. And for twenty hours of police work, it seemed downright Herculean. I looked around the office for Stan, but there was no sign of him. I chewed my bottom lip.

ZED, in its heyday, was law. ZED was unquestionable. It had been a long time since they were the mighty arm of the Metro ("Metro Protects Your Life. ZED Protects Your Death"), but they still had clout. I signed my name to the bogus report and filed it. It was a quiet day, so I looked up Simon Frost's kin. No criminal record, no mention of him being any kind of nuisance. He was a primary school teacher. He was in debt but who the hell wasn't? He'd been married three months, but his mother was the one who signed for his remains to be released to the funeral home. I wondered how they had cleaned him up so she could verify it was him. Maybe the mother was part of the cover-up.

I contemplated what to do for about a half hour before I decided I had to act or give it up completely. I asked Stan to cover for me and he agreed. I was always covering for his long lunches, after all. I took our official car to the Frost residence and headed up the front walk before I could lose my nerve.

The door opened and a well-dressed man with red eyes opened it just enough for his head to poke through. "Yes?"

"I'm Constable Owen. I was wondering if I could speak to someone about Simon Frost's death."

"Um." He looked over his shoulder and then stepped out to join me on the porch. "I'm Simon's husband, Edward. The other police said the matter was settled."

I nodded. "Mostly it is, yes, but I was just wondering if you had any idea what made Simon act this way? From what I can tell reading up on the man, it was completely unlike him to act like this. I just hoped maybe you could shed some light on what happened yesterday."

He looked at the road and then behind himself at the closed door again. He crossed his arms and clutched his elbows, his head down as he composed himself. Finally, he said, "The other people said the matter was settled."

I frowned. "He was your husband. I'm sure you want to know--"

"Constable." His voice was sharp, trembling with tears. "The matter has been settled, all right? You're the one who, uh, did him in, right?"

"Yeah." I winced and lowered my eyes. "It wasn't--"

"I know." His voice was quiet. "They aren't themselves anymore."

I looked up sharply and met his eyes. "What do you mean?"

Edward shrugged and looked furtively about. "It's the first thing they taught us, back in the day. Right? Don't think of them as themselves, they just look like the person you loved. If you're looking for closure or absolution, don't. The thing you killed wasn't my husband, so put your mind as ease."

I stepped closer and lowered my voice to match his. "You know what he was, don't you?"

"The matter's been settled, Constable. Thank you for coming by." He gripped my hand and leaned in to whisper in my ear. "His classroom at Sir Walter Scott Primary School. Right hand bottom drawer of his desk. The manila envelope. If you really want to know, it's there."

He released my hand and the sounds of the neighborhood seemed to come back to life. He sniffled again and stepped back, opening the door without looking.

"I'm really sorry. I can't help you."

He was back in the house before I could even think of a question to ask, so I turned around and walked back to my car. I sat behind the wheel and tried to think.

I was at the edge of something. The safe bet was to back up and let it go, put on my blinders until it was buried under future days. I could wait until it was far enough in my past that it all seemed ridiculous paranoid fantasy. The ZED agents had mentioned this wasn't an isolated incident. And they had moved so fast to hide what really happened to Simon Frost that I could tell there was no dust on them. Maybe they hadn't just been sucking at the budgetary teat. Good God, all this time had ZED been actively covering up the fact zombies were still around?

There was a torn Got Nocced? propaganda poster across the street, hugging a fencepost and torn across the fist. No one took it seriously anymore. Celebrities were on the telly once a month arguing that the inoculations caused mental retardation in children and urging people away from it. They claimed the zombie virus was dormant and we were just pumping unnecessary chemicals into our bodies.

What if they were right, but for the wrong reasons? What if the drug just lulled us into a false sense of security? What if the virus was getting stronger, adapting and evolving? People had to know. I pulled away from Simon Frost's home, typing the name of the school into my GPS at a stop sign. It was nearby as I'd suspected it would be, so I drove directly there and bullied my way through the front office thanks to my uniform.

Simon Frost's Science class was led by a substitute teacher, of course, but I successfully convinced him to give me a moment at the desk. I found the manila envelope Edward had told me about, apologized for the intrusion, and carried it back to the car before I opened it. My fingers trembled as I undid the clasp and poured the contents out onto the passenger seat. I rearranged the papers until I found a coherent arrangement.

Lab tests. That made sense, seeing as he was a Science teacher. I skipped the charts and went directly to his findings. It took me several goes before I deciphered the language, and once I succeeded I wished I hadn't.

The zombie virus was never eliminated. The drugs simply shut it down briefly and gave us a respite from the disease for a few years, but now it had acclimated. The drugs were becoming less and less effective with each passing year. Hell, each passing month. That was what Simon Frost had discovered, according his notes and the damn fool had tried sending his findings to the press. They must have been in on the fix, because there hadn't even been a hint of this resurgence in even the trashiest trades.

And then, just like every filmatic idiot who decides it's safe to play around with zombie DNA, Simon Frost got himself infected. 

My skin crawled at the thought of how close he'd gotten. I was a very long way from the girl I'd once been, the one who had fearlessly faced down zombies as they trekked across mother's rose garden. They were boogiemen out of childhood, the monsters in the closet. I'd grown up and they had stopped existing, but now they were back. Oh, Christ, they were back. They were _back_ and someone had to be told.

I backed out of the spot so quickly that I neglected to look. I have a clear vision of a school bus grill looming up in the driver's side window, far too fast, far too close, and the explosion of shattering glass that fell over me. I'm not sure if I actually saw the bus or if it was just something I manufactured to fill in the alarming blank left behind by the accident.

I was in the hospital for days, unconscious, lost in a haze of confusion. Gina sat by my bedside and held my hand, sometimes sleeping with her head on my thigh, sometimes singing. I liked her singing.

One day I woke to find Gina and the nurses watching the television, all their heads turned away from me. That struck me as odd. A visitor looking away from their loved one, a nurse looking away from her charge. I thought the news must be quiet riveting to draw their attention away in such context, but my head hurt so badly that I couldn't find the strength to look at the television and see what had happened.

It was night when I woke again. The woman with black hair ( _Gina_ , that's her name, why can't I remember that?) was sitting with her back to me, watching the television again. I pushed myself up slowly, so slowly and so quietly that she didn't hear me. My mind was filled with cotton. I couldn't really... put together my... brain. I couldn't think right. I lifted my eyes to the TV and I saw people with guns. Barricades. 

Zombies.

They were back. 

I could have warned...

I could have stopped...

I... 

I turned my head and looked at the monitors. They were all dark, but that didn't... why? Then I thought back to Mom's death. The nurse had turned off her machines to silence the alarms, and then they left to get someone who could make the final pronouncement. I wondered if Gina was aware she was playing my role in that tragedy. I should tell her, but... no. That would alarm her. It would be a bad omen and make her think I was dead. I couldn't do that to Gina.

Poor Gina. Sweet Gina. She'd always teased me about the fact I hadn't gotten nocced. The other constables at the station mocked me by moving the poster so that it loomed over my desk. But I didn't need drugs. I'd gotten bitten and scratched dozens of times when my brother and I fought the damn things, and I was fine.

I leaned closed to Gina. I could smell her perfume and, underneath, the smell of her skin. Sweat and skin.

Gina was paranoid. Gina got nocced once every other year, boosting the initial shot when they were first made available by the UN. I wanted to tell her she was safe. I wanted to tell her that she was drugged, that I was apparently immune, and that it would all be okay.

But that could wait.

Because at the moment, all I could see was her bare arms. All I could smell was her skin. My lips pulled back from my teeth.

And God help me.

I was just so hungry.


End file.
